One Anecdote I Must Relate, The Circumstances Of Which Are As True
As They Are Singular.
One of my constant walks when I am at leisure,
is in my lowlands, where I have the pleasure of seeing my cattle,
horses, and colts.
Exuberant grass replenishes all my fields, the
best representative of our wealth; in the middle of that tract I
have cut a ditch eight feet wide, the banks of which nature adorns
every spring with the wild salendine, and other flowering weeds,
which on these luxuriant grounds shoot up to a great height. Over
this ditch I have erected a bridge, capable of bearing a loaded
waggon; on each side I carefully sow every year some grains of hemp,
which rise to the height of fifteen feet, so strong and so full of
limbs as to resemble young trees: I once ascended one of them four
feet above the ground. These produce natural arbours, rendered often
still more compact by the assistance of an annual creeping plant
which we call a vine, that never fails to entwine itself among their
branches, and always produces a very desirable shade. From this
simple grove I have amused myself an hundred times in observing the
great number of humming birds with which our country abounds: the
wild blossoms everywhere attract the attention of these birds, which
like bees subsist by suction. From this retreat I distinctly watch
them in all their various attitudes; but their flight is so rapid,
that you cannot distinguish the motion of their wings. On this
little bird nature has profusely lavished her most splendid colours;
the most perfect azure, the most beautiful gold, the most dazzling
red, are for ever in contrast, and help to embellish the plumes of
his majestic head. The richest palette of the most luxuriant painter
could never invent anything to be compared to the variegated tints,
with which this insect bird is arrayed. Its bill is as long and as
sharp as a coarse sewing needle; like the bee, nature has taught it
to find out in the calix of flowers and blossoms, those mellifluous
particles that serve it for sufficient food; and yet it seems to
leave them untouched, undeprived of anything that our eyes can
possibly distinguish. When it feeds, it appears as if immovable
though continually on the wing; and sometimes, from what motives I
know not, it will tear and lacerate flowers into a hundred pieces:
for, strange to tell, they are the most irascible of the feathered
tribe. Where do passions find room in so diminutive a body? They
often fight with the fury of lions, until one of the combatants
falls a sacrifice and dies. When fatigued, it has often perched
within a few feet of me, and on such favourable opportunities I have
surveyed it with the most minute attention. Its little eyes appear
like diamonds, reflecting light on every side: most elegantly
finished in all parts it is a miniature work of our great parent;
who seems to have formed it the smallest, and at the same time the
most beautiful of the winged species.
As I was one day sitting solitary and pensive in my primitive
arbour, my attention was engaged by a strange sort of rustling noise
at some paces distant. I looked all around without distinguishing
anything, until I climbed one of my great hemp stalks; when to my
astonishment, I beheld two snakes of considerable length, the one
pursuing the other with great celerity through a hemp stubble field.
The aggressor was of the black kind, six feet long; the fugitive was
a water snake, nearly of equal dimensions. They soon met, and in the
fury of their first encounter, they appeared in an instant firmly
twisted together; and whilst their united tails beat the ground,
they mutually tried with open jaws to lacerate each other. What a
fell aspect did they present! their heads were compressed to a very
small size, their eyes flashed fire; and after this conflict had
lasted about five minutes, the second found means to disengage
itself from the first, and hurried toward the ditch. Its antagonist
instantly assumed a new posture, and half creeping and half erect,
with a majestic mien, overtook and attacked the other again, which
placed itself in the same attitude, and prepared to resist. The
scene was uncommon and beautiful; for thus opposed they fought with
their jaws, biting each other with the utmost rage; but
notwithstanding this appearance of mutual courage and fury, the
water snake still seemed desirous of retreating toward the ditch,
its natural element. This was no sooner perceived by the keen-eyed
black one, than twisting its tail twice round a stalk of hemp, and
seizing its adversary by the throat, not by means of its jaws, but
by twisting its own neck twice round that of the water snake, pulled
it back from the ditch. To prevent a defeat the latter took hold
likewise of a stalk on the bank, and by the acquisition of that
point of resistance became a match for its fierce antagonist.
Strange was this to behold; two great snakes strongly adhering to
the ground mutually fastened together by means of the writhings
which lashed them to each other, and stretched at their full length,
they pulled but pulled in vain; and in the moments of greatest
exertions that part of their bodies which was entwined, seemed
extremely small, while the rest appeared inflated, and now and then
convulsed with strong undulations, rapidly following each other.
Their eyes seemed on fire, and ready to start out of their heads; at
one time the conflict seemed decided; the water snake bent itself
into two great folds, and by that operation rendered the other more
than commonly outstretched; the next minute the new struggles of the
black one gained an unexpected superiority, it acquired two great
folds likewise, which necessarily extended the body of its adversary
in proportion as it had contracted its own.
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